Hi ocean, and always good to see you posting too.Exactly! Always nice to see you posting!
When putting forth any mitigating witnesses it also opens the door for the state to bring forth a plethora of witnesses to refute them all.
Imo, any mitigating witnesses the DT may have been able to scrounge up would have major credibility baggage of their own.
I mean who in the heck would testify to his good character when he has none? Imo, only those just like him who ran in his circle of scams, and cons.
CM really has no one else to blame for the life he's led. It is what it is. He made his bed, and must suck it up now. This is the legacy he's left behind starting as a juvenile, imo.
It's not JSs fault the DT had no truly credible mitigating witnesses to call that would have held up under cross examinations. JS gave them wide latitude to put on their case.
We can all bank on it when the final phase finally comes to pass the state will have enough bad character witnesses against this evil man including McStay family members, and so many more who were also conned, and victimized by Merritt.
As an aside: lately I've been reading how many in CA are sick of their governor already, and how he promised when campaigning he would honor what the majority wanted only to daily do the opposite making the citizens far less safer.
Anyway, it gives me hope he will serve one term, and I believe CA may elect one who believes in honoring what all CA DP juries decided when they recommended the death penalty was the only just sentence in over 700 individuals who haven't been executed.
I also believe they will find a way to expedite the long ridiculous appeals. Iirc, they had already announced they would be doing this before Newsome became governor.
Unortunately it always takes way too long to correct any terrible wrong.
Just look how long it took to enact prison reform for those who were sent to prison for decades for far less crimes. Now they each have their own mentors when released, are learning job skills, and are found employment which gives them the best chance, and is far safer overall for society as a whole. There again it blows my mind it took so so many years to right a terrible wrong, but thankfully it now has happen in 2019.
However in CA they had already been releasing many thousands ...years before prison reform was enacted this year. Those they knew who were violent offenders with many being violent rapists, pedophiles, and even murderers.
I admit I've never understood why CA releases violent offenders back on the streets way before serving their time, and among law abiding citizens again or why their own citizens tolerate it by putting up with it.
Jmho
You're certainly right in what you say about any character witnesses regarding CM, i doubt he has any friends that would vouch for him.
We can see what he is by the way he treated Joey and his family. I think JM was way too tolerant of him, but think he realized when it was too late, and was planning to get rid of him anyway, but in doing that it was a most dangerous time for JM dealing with someone like CM. I'm sure JM had no idea what CM was really capable of, and who would ever think someone they helped so much would turn on them in such a horrific way.
It really is a shocking crime.
That's pretty messed up in the state of CA, i wasn't aware of that. And as they say the wheels of Justice grind very slowly as does change to a system, and dreadful they put so many violent offenders back into society, and a big risk to society for sure. Maybe a lot of those citizens there aren't even aware of it either?
